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Dorko the Magnificent

Chapter 4

Actually, my first mistake wasn’t taking a bow, it was standing up again.On the way up, I hit Mom’s water glass . . . which fell over and hit a candlestick . . . which fell over and caught a napkin on fire . . . which made Uncle Pete yell, “Pour on water!” . . . which made me throw a glass of water . . . which was my second mistake.I don’t know what Grandma Melvyn had in her water glass, but it sure wasn’t water. When I threw it on the flame, it went WHOOOSH and the fire spread across the table . . . which made Aunt Trudy knock Uncle Pete right into the cake . . . which made him knock the cake onto the floor . . . which probably saved us all from food poisoning, but which really took the magic out of the moment.While Ape Boy climbed the china cabinet to get a better view, Mom got the fire extinguisher and put out the flames. When the fire was out and the smoke cleared, Grandma Melvyn and I were alone in the dining room. I looked out the window to avoid the Wicked Wobble Eye, and that’s when I heard the weirdest sound ever. It was a wheezing, honking, snorting sound like a cross between an asthmatic goose and an insane pig. I looked at Grandma Melvyn. Sure enough, she was laughing. Or maybe she was having some kind of fit. It was hard to tell. Her whole body shook and tears streamed down her cheeks. She wheezed and sputtered trying to get her breath between snorts. Her face was bright red and she looked like she was going to fall out of her chair.Perfect. Grandma Melvyn, the woman who never ever, ever laughed, was going to laugh herself to death because of me. I was about to call an ambulance when she stopped and said something that nearly knocked me over.“Well, Robbie,” she said, “your bow needs work, but I’ve seen worse acts.”“What?” I asked.“Got cake in your ears?”“No,” I said, “it’s just that you never called me by my name before.”

“Well, you never did anything interesting before,” she said. “Maybe staying here won’t be as bad as it looks.”“What?” I asked.Grandma Melvyn narrowed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. Her mouth curled up on one side in something that wasn’t quite a smile.“Well, well,” she said. “Trixie didn’t tell you yet, did she? I’m stuck with you bunch of losers.”“What?”“What? What? What?” Grandma Melvyn snapped. “There something wrong with you? Thomas Edison didn’t say ‘watt’ that much, and he invented the lightbulb. Oh, that’s a good one.”She went back to wheezing and snorting while I sat there with my mouth open like the first guy in a sci-fi movie to witness an alien invasion: amazed, confused, and too stupid to run.Grandma Melvyn poked me with her cane. “Don’t work yourself into a wedgie,” she said. “I’m out of here the minute those Trixies at Almetta Insurance chuck up the dough for my knee operation. Sooner, if Trixie stops ordering pizza and goes back to cooking.”Grandma Melvyn stood up and leaned hard on her cane. She shuffled out of the dining room and down the hall. I heard her yell at Mom in the kitchen: “Make with the ice cream, Trixie! You call this a birthday party? Where’s the ice cream?”